


This Long A Winter

by Deannie



Series: Keep Dreaming [3]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama/Romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-07-14
Updated: 1997-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 05:51:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/794587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim discovers his loftmate's secret, and wonders if it's too late to reveal his own. Part 3 of the Keep Dreaming series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Long A Winter

DISCLAIMER: If I owned Jim and Blair, they would never get together--cause I just have too much fun angsting them! (hee hee) Seriously, UPN and Pet Fly own them now, and until I get a hug on national television... I guess I'll just have to continue the torture.  
RATING: Mid-line R-ish.  
  
NOTES: Part Three of the Keep Dreaming series. 

## This Long of a Winter

by Dean Warner  


David stood quietly, trying not to wake his lover, and hunted for his boxers. Not an easy task, given the frenzy they had both worked themselves up into after dinner. Boxers on, he headed for the windowsill, and the pack of cigarettes and lighter that lay there waiting for him. 

"Those things'll kill you," came a drowsy voice from the tangled sheets. 

"Maybe," David conceded, taking a long, centering drag on his cancerstick. "But you might fuck me to death before they have the chance." 

Blair Sandburg rolled out of bed, sitting on the edge as he rubbed sleep from his eyes. "Don't you wish." 

"Yes, I *do* wish, actually," David shot back good-naturedly. 

Blair just stared at him in the dim light from the window. "I'm going to make some tea."  
  


* * *

As the kettle boiled, Blair allowed himself to remember the feeling of David inside him. The young aeronautics student was so... gentle--when he needed to be. And if Blair needed a good hard fuck? Well, David was up to that challenge as well.

The anthropologist supposed that, in some vague way, he actually loved David. Not in a "vow your troth, spend you lives together" sort of way, but in an "I know that you'll always be there when I need you" way. David didn't care who else Blair screwed around with--didn't even care when Blair just needed to come over and be held. Guilt free. No attachments. 

And right now, Blair needed to feel loved, without the attachments. 

The kettle whistled loud enough to wake the dead, and Blair pulled it from the stove quickly, setting leaves and water to steep in the old chinese teapot that David seemed to use only when Blair was over for the night. 

  
He stumbled back into the bedroom with a tray for the teapot and mugs, and set it on the table, walking over to the bed to sit and admire his lover. No. Not his lover. That word was reserved for someone who would never take the title. David had once laughingly called himself Blair's "fuck-buddy," and the name fit as well as anything. 

David was tall and lanky, in an awkward, Jeff-Goldblum way, his hair dramatically dark and curly, his skin a deep, flawless bronze. He might as well have been an acting student, for all his melodrama and theatricality, but there was something stable there that Blair, whose life had always been a long, jumbled series of homes and guesthouses, had found alluring, even in their undergrad days. 

"So Blair," David asked quietly, blowing his smoke out the window before continuing. "When are you going to tell him?" 

Blair laid back on the bed, sighing. "Haven't we had this conversation before?" 

"Sure we have," his friend conceded, stubbing out his cigarette and heading back to the welcoming covers. "But we're going to keep having it until you make a decision." 

"I have made a decision," Blair insisted tiredly. "I want him--at least as a friend--so I'm not going to tell him." 

David grabbed his smaller bedmate, pulling the anthropologist into a gentle hug, as he nestled Blair's head carefully to his chest. "Let me rephrase that... We're going to keep having this conversation until you come to the *right* decision." 

Blair snuggled shamelessly for a moment. He didn't want to talk about this. He had enough trouble when he could keep his feelings to himself. He didn't need Mr. Amateur Psychologist dragging it all out of him. 

"What's the matter, David?" he asked, trying to lure the other man into a more playful mood. "You getting sick of fooling around with me?" 

"I'll never be sick of fooling around with you, lover," David stated soberly. "I love you. But *you* love *him*... And living with him is tearing you apart." He sighed, pulling his friend up to a seated position and reaching for the teapot. "If you're not going to tell him, at least think about moving out." 

"I can't." The response was vehement and immediate. 

David smiled, handing Blair his tea. "Reflex response," he noted sagely. "You want to have it both ways. You want to pine for him--which you're getting *really* good at, by the way--and never tell him how you feel, but you also want to keep yourself open to the possibility that he'll somehow figure this whole thing out by osmosis and fall into your arms." 

Blair was silent for a long, long time. When he spoke, his voice was cold. "You can be really vicious," he stated angrily. 

"No, Blair. I'm just telling you the way I see things." 

Blair knew he was only mad at himself, but David was here, and a handy target. "And you're some sort of Freud now, Dr. Science?" 

David kept his cool. "No. I'm just a friend who loves you, who's trying desperately to get you to see that you're never going to know if Jim is the right one if you don't *ask* him." 

Blair was off the bed in a shot. Damned if he was going to listen to his own thoughts coming out of David's mouth! He dressed quickly, ignoring his erstwhile fuck-buddy as the taller man tried to bar his way. 

"Blair, come on! I'm sorry, all right?" David almost reeled from the smaller body, as Blair pushed him out of the way and headed for the door. 

"Blair, come *on*!"  
  


* * *

Blair wasn't thinking terribly clearly as he drove home. If he were, he would never have *gone* home in the first place--not without a very thorough bath and a fresh change of clothes. All he had the presence of mind to do was to sneak quietly into the loft and head for his bedroom, stripping down to nothing before pulling himself into bed.

He never realised that Jim could have smelled him--*and* his lover--a mile away. 

  
The Sentinel lay in bed, stunned. God! He'd spent all this time worrying about what Blair would think, wondering if Blair would be able to handle it if he came out to him, thinking that Blair, Cascade's own, private babemagnet, would never give a second thought to a *guy's* attentions... 

But the scent that now mingled too closely with his loftmate's was definitely male. And it wasn't just from a friendly hug. 

How could you be so *stupid*?! he yelled in his mind. You're so *fucking* afraid of letting him know *anything* about you, and now you find out that, maybe, if you'd only asked... 

He could feel something snap in his mind. Some thin, needy little wire that had held out a hope that someday, somehow, he could find the courage to tell Blair how he felt, and that by some miracle, Blair would feel the same way. 

And now that you've waited too long, he's found someone else, he told himself bitterly. He tuned into Blair's breathing for a moment, hearing a residual of the grad student's mad dash up the stairs as Blair's body slid slowly into sleep. Jim focused on the heartbeat as it evened out, trying desperately to block out the smell of another man on *his* partner. 

Sure Jimmy, his mind bit back cruelly. Sure he's your *partner*--but did you ever bother to ask him if he wanted to become something else? 

Idiot! 

  
After an hour of that heartbeat, Jim couldn't take it any more. He stood quietly, heading down the stairs and toward his Guide's room. He'd just have to hope that somewhere in Blair's heart, there was a part of him that wanted his anal, crusty old roommate--wanted him as more than a friend, more than a partner... 

He stopped just shy of the cold french doors, doubt seizing him. 

He doesn't want you, Jim. 

If he did, he'd have let you know. 

He already has somebody--somebody close... 

Not just someone. 

Defeated by the voices in his head, Jim looked around the loft helplessly, feeling the walls mocking him. 

He didn't even wake his partner as he grabbed his jacket from its hook and closed the door firmly behind him. 

  
And he was too far away to hear it, as Blair cried hungrily in his sleep...  
  


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